Posted by Rebecca
a resident of another community
on May 5, 2014 at 1:14 pm

Friends for Youth, a local nonprofit mentoring program serving San Mateo and Santa Clara county youth, is participating in @SVGives. Please join us and other organizations in this unprecedented day of giving. Visit svgives.org or razoo.com/story/Friends-For-Youth for our page! Help make this a great day for local nonprofits and our community!

Posted by Alison Barnsley
a resident of Old Mountain View
on May 5, 2014 at 2:15 pm

The Mountain View Educational Foundation is excited to participate in SVGives, and has the opportunity to get a $5000 matching grant to continue supporting high-quality education in Mountain VIew into the future -- svgives.razoo.com/story/mvef-endowment. Research shows that giving makes you happier, improves social connection, evokes gratitude, and is contagious. Whether your passion is education, the environment, youth services, housing, STEM, health, or something else entirely, there is a nonprofit that needs your help -- please participate in SVGives on May 6!

Posted by Mike Cobb
a resident of Cuesta Park
on May 5, 2014 at 2:32 pm

Please join me in supporting Mountain View's own Peninsula Youth Theatre as part of Silicon Valley Gives! PYT has been providing outstanding arts education opportunities and outreach in Mtn View for over 20 years. Seagate has offered a very generous $10,000 matching grant for donations in PYT's name. Web Link

Thanks to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation for this really terrific event!

Would like to donate to MVEF, but can someone from MVEF explain why we need to use the link to Razoo, and in the process give them 4.9% of our hard-earned money? What is the benefit of using Razoo? Does someone at MVEF have a husband/wife/whatever work there??? Why can't we give 100% directly to MVEF so all the money benefit the local schools???

Posted by Martha Young
a resident of Waverly Park
on May 6, 2014 at 10:03 am

@J -- the Silicon Valley Community Foundation has organized this event and is partnering with Razoo , so all participating agencies are using Razoo. This is how they are taking advantage of the matching grants available for this one-day event. Many nonprofits use a system similar to Razoo to process donations -- Network for Good, JustGive.org, etc. Each charges a fee. They also provide other services like reporting and donation tracking that are beneficial to the organizations. Of course, you can always donate directly to any organization if you wish via check.

Posted by Alison Barnsley
a resident of Old Mountain View
on May 7, 2014 at 12:46 pm

@J, thank you for asking the question and @Martha, thank you for answering. It's true that a check directly to your favorite nonprofit is going to have the least administrative cost. But events like SVGives build awareness and can bring in new donors, or encourage additional gifts from current donors.

The one-day blitz is also very efficient. Yesterday, 14,633 donors gave nearly $8 million to 674 nonprofits. It would be impossible for all those nonprofits to independently do the marketing and outreach that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) and their corporate & foundation partners could.

Thank you to every donor who gave to any nonprofit during SVGives & thanks to SVCF for organizing the giving day!